Chapter 23
The motel was called the Mountain View Inn, which was generous considering there was neither a mountain nor a view, but they had a vacancy sign and a bored receptionist who handed Dustin a form to fill out.
“One room,” he said.
“King or two queens?”
“King,” Dustin said without even thinking.
Would that scare Greg? If there was only one bed. Dustin was about to find out.
The receptionist slid a key across the counter. “Room 14. Checkout's at eleven. No smoking. No pets.”
“What about reapers?”
She looked up.
“Kidding,” Dustin said, and took the key.
The room was small, but clean enough for Dustin's standards. There was a desk, a TV bolted to the wall, and a bathroom with a door that didn't quite close all the way.
And, as he had requested, there was only one bed.
He watched Greg take this in, watched the reaper's ears turn pink.
“I can sleep on the floor,” Greg offered. “Or not sleep. I can probably get away with not sleeping.”
“Relax.” Dustin dropped his bag on the desk with his good hand. Then he turned back to Greg, who was still hovering in the doorway.
“I'm going to take a shower,” he announced. “You're welcome to join me.”
Greg's mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“I suppose you can get comfortable.” Dustin jerked his chin toward the bed. “Or you can take your chance to run. Your call.”
He held Greg's gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then turned and walked into the bathroom and shut the door—as much as it would shut anyway.
There was a half-inch gap between the frame and the wood that let in a sliver of light from the room.
Whatever. If Greg wanted to peek, Dustin had nothing to hide.
At least until he caught his reflection in the mirror and stopped.
The road rash looked bad in the harsh light of the bathroom, all raw and red, the skin scraped away along his cheekbone and down his jaw. His lip was swollen on one side. Had he bitten it? He didn't remember now, but he must have.
He scrutinized himself.
Well.
He looked like shit.
But still fine for someone who'd gotten hit by a car.
And Greg hadn't run yet.
Dustin turned on the shower and worked himself out of the sling, then the shirt, then everything else. His movements were slow and clumsy and sent bright flares of pain through his shoulder every time he forgot and used his left arm—which was constantly.
The water stung too, as it scraped the rest of the dirt from his body, but Dustin almost welcomed the pain. It was something to anchor him to the moment. Something that proved that he was still alive—against all odds.
An image of Greg rose in his mind, unbidden. The way he'd looked at him on the highway, his knees on the asphalt, his hands on Dustin's face. Completely forgetting about his assignment and his whole purpose for being.
Dustin used to think that there was nothing more important to Greg than doing his job.
But maybe there was.
Maybe he was more human than he'd claimed.
Struggling with that thought, Dustin kept his shower brief.
He dried himself off perfunctorily, managed to get his sling back on after some cursing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.
It was time to find out whether Greg had taken his opportunity to run or not.
Dustin opened the door.
Greg was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands folded in his lap, back straight, looking like a man waiting for a job interview he was certain he'd fail. Dustin's ruined shirt was folded neatly on the desk.
Folded.
Dustin swallowed down a feeling he was afraid to identify.
He crossed to the desk, grabbed his phone from his jacket pocket, and dropped onto the bed beside Greg. Not close enough to touch but almost.
Licking his lips, he unlocked his phone.
Forty-seven notifications.
Apex Energy had moved fast. Their social accounts were already lit up with the announcement of his next jump—a slick graphic of a canyon silhouette with bold text: DEVIL'S NEEDLE.
ONE MAN. ONE SHOT. COMING THIS FALL. The Xtreme Doug watermark was mercifully small, tucked into the corner like even the marketing team knew better than to put a cartoon duck on something this lethal.
Dustin scrolled through the comments.
our boy has a death wish and honestly? respect
Only 2 people have ever made it through alive. 2 didn't. That's basically a coin flip.
50% fatality rate and this man said bet. Legend.
Who else is only following to see if he actually dies
RIP in advance king
That last one had eight thousand likes.
“What are you looking at?” Greg asked.
“My sponsor posted about Devil's Needle.” Dustin tilted the phone so Greg could see the graphic. “It's very tasteful, don't you think?”
Greg leaned in, squinting at the screen. His eyebrows drew together as he took in the image. “They're... advertising your potential death?”
“They're advertising my jump. The potential death is just good marketing.”
“That's horrible.”
“It is what it is.” Dustin scrolled to the comments. “People are taking bets on me. Current odds are sixty-forty against.”
Greg looked like he might be sick.
“Listen to this one.” Dustin read aloud, keeping his voice flat. “'If he dies, at least the footage will be incredible.' Heart emoji. Fire emoji. Skull emoji.”
“How are you not upset by this?”
Dustin looked at him. Greg was staring at him with that open, appalled expression that looked 100% honest.
Dustin couldn't remember the last time someone had been this upset on his behalf.
“A bunch of strangers on the internet betting on whether I live or die is just a Tuesday for me,” he said. “People love the thrill. They watch because something might go wrong.”
Greg went quiet for a moment. “Is that why you do it?”
“No.” Dustin looked back at his phone. “I don't know,” he admitted for the first time in his life. “But I'm good at it.”
He scrolled past a few more comments—one comparing him to Icarus, one accusing him of being suicidal for clout, one that was just a string of prayer hands emojis—and then his phone buzzed in his hand.
Incoming call.
Cathy.
Dustin stared at the screen. The name sat there in plain black text, pulsing with each ring.
Was his mother as worried as Greg was?
Dustin answered the phone.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart.” Cathy's voice was calm. Of course it was. “I saw the announcement.”
Dustin leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. He could feel a headache coming.
“Yeah,” he said. “It just went up.”
“Devil's Needle,” she said, contemplating. “It sounds dramatic. When are you doing it?”
“In three weeks.”
“Have you trained for that kind of jump?”
“I've done canyon flights.”
“Like this one?”
“Similar enough.”
A pause. Dustin could hear her moving around—the soft sound of a cabinet closing, water running.
She was in the kitchen. He could picture it without trying: the small house, the counter that was always clean, the window above the sink that looked out onto a yard she kept tidy because she needed to keep busy.
“Your equipment's in good shape?” she asked.
“Always is.”
“And you'll have a team with you? Spotters, medical?”
“It's a sponsored shoot. They'll have everything.”
“Good.” Another pause. The water turned off. “Are you eating enough?”
Something cracked in Dustin's chest. A hairline fracture in the wall he'd built to keep conversations like this from touching anything real.
“That's it?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“What do you mean?”
“I just told you I'm doing a jump that's killed half the people who've tried it, and you want to know if I'm eating enough.”
“I asked about your equipment and your team.”
“Oh yeah, that was great.”
A pause on the other end of the line. “What is it that you need me to say, then?”
“I don't know, Mom. 'Please don't do this'? 'I'm worried about you'? Anything?”
“As if that would stop you.”
“You could try.”
“I tried. With both of you! For years. It didn't—” She stopped herself. When she spoke again, her voice was tight. “You're going to do what you're going to do. You always have. I'd rather know the details so I'm not blindsided.”
“So you can what? Prepare?”
“So I can be ready.”
“Ready for what? For the call?” Dustin rose, his shoulder screaming at the sudden movement, but he barely felt it. “Ready for someone to ring you up and tell you your other son finally—”
“Don't.”
“Can you not even pretend to care? Just—can you just pretend you're not thinking it should have been me?”
Complete silence followed Dustin's words.
He regretted them as soon as they'd rolled off his tongue. This wasn't fair to either of them. It certainly wasn't fair to his brother's memory, but…
Dustin had never really been able to shake the thought. And if he was thinking it, surely his mother must be thinking it too.
If she didn't, she wouldn't be acting this way. All distanced and aloof and—
“Don't you ever,” Cathy said sharply. Finally some emotion had entered her voice. “Is this why you're jumping? You're crying for attention?”
The words hit Dustin somewhere below the ribs.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you doing it because you want me to scream? You want me to beg?” Her voice was climbing. “Would that make it better? Would that prove something?”
“That's not—”
“Because I have spent every single day since your brother died trying to—” Her voice cracked. She pulled it back together, barely. “I can't fall apart on your schedule, Dustin. I can't do that.”
The line was very quiet.
Dustin's hand was shaking. His pulse was loud in his ears and his shoulder was throbbing and he couldn't form a clear thought.
“It's late,” Cathy said. “Get some sleep.”
She hung up.
Dustin stared at the phone's dark screen and his own reflection stared back at him.
Without thinking, he flung the phone across the room. It hit the far wall with a sharp crack and landed face-down on the carpet.
She thought he was jumping for her.
She thought the stunts, the streams, the Devil's Needle—she thought he was doing it to make her react. To force her hand. To crack through whatever she'd built around herself and find out if there was still a mother underneath.
Was he?
No.
Or was he?
No.
The mattress creaked and then Greg was standing next to him.
“Dustin?” That was all Greg said, looking at him with those eyes that didn't know how to hide a single emotion. There was worry, care—hurt, somehow, as if watching Dustin hurt was doing something to him too.
That didn't make sense. None of this was Greg's problem. None of this had anything to do with him. And yet here he was. Standing too close. Saying Dustin's name like that.
Something in Dustin's chest twisted, hot and sharp, and he needed it out, needed it gone or converted into something his body knew what to do with because if he stood here one more second with Greg looking at him like that and his mother's voice still ringing in his ears, something was going to crack open.
Something that he couldn't brush off with a joke.
He grabbed the front of Greg's shirt.
Greg's eyes went wide.
“Stop me,” Dustin said, “if you need me to stop.”
It was all the warning Greg got before Dustin was kissing him.
Dustin's shoulder lit up when he leaned forward, but he shoved the pain somewhere far away because Greg's lips were cool and slightly parted and right there, and Dustin wanted them more than he wanted to not be in pain.
For a second Greg just froze. Mouth open against Dustin's, hands hovering, brain stalled. Then something caught up and he kissed back—clumsy, too eager, their teeth knocking when he tilted the wrong way.
His hand came up and landed on Dustin's shoulder. The bad one.
Pain cracked white across Dustin's vision. He flinched, a sharp sound through his nose, and Greg yanked his hand back.
“Sorry—”
Dustin grabbed his wrist and put Greg's hand on the side of his neck instead. “There,” he said against Greg's mouth, and kissed him again before Greg could spiral.
Greg's fingers curled against his neck, uncertain, then tightened.
He wanted this, didn't he? Wanted this just as much as Dustin needed it.
He pushed forward, pushed Greg on the bed and then Dustin was half over him, knee on the mattress, the sling crushed between their chests.
He could taste something faintly sweet on Greg's lips and he chased it, licking into Greg's mouth, and Greg made a sound that went straight through him.
Low and overwhelmed and nothing like the careful reaper who quoted policy and clutched his clipboard.
Dustin shuddered.
He wanted more of that. He wanted to take this reaper and unravel him and put him back together as something else—something that would not remember all the reasons this was a bad idea.
He bit at Greg's lower lip, softer this time, deliberate, and Greg's whole body stuttered against his. His other hand found Dustin's hip and gripped almost hard enough to bruise.
Dustin made a low sound. He hadn't known Greg had it in him. “Points for enthusiasm,” he murmured against the reaper's lips.